European Universities:
Rhetoric Heating Up
UD's written quite a lot about Europe's medieval universities, mired in the past and in no mood to change. Lately, a few people have been willing to express their anger about this.
Lecture halls at Europe's oldest university, the University of Bologna in Italy, are crumbling. French university libraries are outdated, poorly accessible and increasingly ignored.
Students receive little guidance. European college dropout rates average 40 percent. One survey found that more than a third of adults in the EU cannot perform basic computer tasks such as using a mouse to access an Internet site or working with a word-processing program.
"Many go to university because they think it's prestigious. But most of us know that we may still be working at the sandwich shop" after graduation, Fatima Bouziane, a sociology student at the University of Saint-Denis, said as she headed to a part-time cafe job in a bleak neighborhood north of Paris.
The head of France's main employers union, Laurence Parisot, says French universities are "the shame of our nation."
Their dire state is becoming a campaign issue in next spring's election. Presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist, says the university system should be "dynamited."
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